Lux Art Institute

When artist David Humphrey arrived at the Lux Art Institute on Nov. 11 for a monthlong residency, he faced a blank wall, or, to be more specific, a blank door.

The core of the Lux concept is the artist creates artwork, and the public gets to watch. Humphrey asked to paint the large sliding door that dominates one of the studio’s four walls.

Humphrey returned to New York last week, and that door is now “Pastorale With Pets.” But not for long.

Unlike most of the work created at the Lux, “Pastorale” will only last as long as Humphrey’s exhibit. At Humphrey’s request, the door (and the surrounding walls) will be painted over once the exhibit ends on Jan. 1.

“To work on the largest scale, I knew that I wanted to address the architecture,” said Humphrey, a senior critic at Yale University whose paintings are in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in addition to numerous other private and public collections. “The only way to do that was to be on the architecture. I don’t mind that it gets painted out. I could either do it again, or do it somewhere else. It’s now in me; it’s become an option.”

His goal at the Lux, he explained during his final week in residence, was to solve a “puzzle” he set for himself: “To harmonize the architecture with the exhibition, and the world outside.”

There’s no question he succeeded.

His “canvas,” that sliding door, is one of the primary architectural features of the Lux studio. When the door is open, you get a sweeping view of the San Elijo Lagoon and the surrounding area. The vista extends to Rancho Santa Fe, where you can see several houses perched on a ridge. When the door is closed, there’s a solid wall.

Humphrey has painted a fantastical tree on, above and beyond the door. It seems to sprout large, abstract patches of color, as well as encompass several new, high-hung canvasses, a video monitor, even the I-beam supporting the door.

“It is something of a modern-art tree, or maybe it’s like children’s art, or like a giant crayon drawing of a tree,” he said. “It’s a tree that gives fruit, and it’s kind of a mad bunch of fruit that includes video monitors and canvasses. And when the door is open, it’s more like one tree, but when it closes, it becomes a bit of a grove, a cluster, or a stand of trees.”

Off in the distance in the painting is an image of one of the houses on the ridge, and in the foreground he has hung a painting he made of the Lux. There’s also a doghouse, a dog bowl and a large, wild-eyed cat with claws extended.

“I relate to him,” Humphrey said. “I think the cat is the artist presence, so he’s a little wild, a little dangerous, but also maybe a little frightened.”

Then there’s the two enormous, three-dimensional poodles, one black and one white, standing in the studio. He brought them with him and initially expected to use them like “sentinel poodles,” guarding the painting. Now, rather than guarding it, they are considering it, as if ready to jump in.

“I love the way that dogs sometimes are masters of their impulse to chase the rabbit, or to chase the ball, and often they hold it together, often under a human guise,” he said. “But in this case, they are either going to rush for the food, go to the doghouse, or chase the cat.”

Of course that’s not the only scenario. Humphrey heard plenty of others from the hundreds of Lux visitors, including school groups who came to see an artist at work.

“It was a real pleasure for me to hear the associations and the stories of the kids,” he said. “The second- and third-graders are just so enthusiastic. They’ll tell an incredibly elaborate story and sometimes they are very acute, very consistent with some of the things I was thinking about. Other times they just are out in left field. That’s a delight, because I like to think of these things as interpretive playthings, and that there’s kind of a collaborative dimension.”

That collaborative, even interactive aspect is at the core of his art (his recent book of essays and reviews is titled “Blind Handshake,” which describes Humphrey’s relationship with his viewers and with his sources). The elements in his art not only interact with one another, but also with elements outside, aspects of his other paintings, and the architecture of the room.

The entire gallery becomes like a walk-in diorama. You can stand in the middle and consider the interaction, or join in yourself. (Is that an I-beam or is it part of the tree? Has the architecture become part of the painting, or is the painting part of the architecture?)

But as he returns to New York, and next year takes up a semester-long residency as the Dodd Chair at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art, it’s a challenge that he’ll continue to consider:

“Doing this (at Lux) makes me want to address all different kinds of architecture in more robust ways.”